We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The most common postural problem with desk-sitting and desk-reading is Postural Kyphosis (one type of kyphosis, aka "hunchback"). It is due to a lazy, slouched or slumped sitting posture with the head too far forward and upper back too rounded, but in time it continues as a lazy habit while standing and walking: slightly hunched and with shoulders forward.
In medicine, this posture has been nicknamed "Scholar's Hump" and "Dowager's Hump."
It is bad for your back and terrible for appearance - adds years to your appearance. You can try to strengthen postural muscles by sitting tall with your shoulders back. You have to sit on your "sitz bones," aka ischial tuberosities" and not on your behind. You also have to get rid of the habit of neck-leaning, peering forward or downwards.
Another help can be a straight-backed chair, if you use the back of the chair and resist peering forward.
Another corrective could be a lumbar support cushion or pillow. They keep your spine in a natural position and remind you to sit properly.
If your postural kyphosis is bad enough, add some exercises to attempt to strengthen your core to make it easier to correct it. The best are planks, deadlifts, and weighted squats.
Ideally, you should be focusing on engaging your postural muscles all the time, regardless of what activity you’re pursuing. Whether you’re working out at home or at the gym, standing in line at the grocery store, or sitting at your desk working, you should make it a point to keep your abs pulled in, your shoulder blades rolling down the back so that your chest is up and forward, and your spine in one line.
Europe refuses to see that they are being hijacked. In a predatory Islam, they are just dhimmis to be taken advantage of. Euroland gave up seeing evil the same time they gave up on God.
A BD addendum,Islam and the West: We Can’t Coexist?Wars of religion are different from wars over territory and resources. I am sure not every Muslim in the US or UK wants Sharia law to replace existing law, but I suspect many wouldn't mind. Some, as we can see, view it as a holy, sacred mission to destroy non-Muslims until they submit. In the UK, the government seems to want to semi-submit, but it will never be enough. Like student rioters, if you give them an inch they'll take a mile. Euroland is already getting used to having a nasty case of cultural cancer.
Even in the most soft-hearted practices of Christianity, we are taught that discernment (aka discriminating good from terrible, helpful from unhelpful, destructive from constructive, etc) must be a component of Christian wisdom and practice. "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves."
Did a post-Christian world retain the dove part and forget the snake part? Why? Decadence, comfort, and cowardice?
If ever there were a narrative worthy of being subjected to “stubborn skepticism,” in (Yale President) Salovey’s words, the claim that Yale was the home of “hatred and discrimination” is it. There is not a single faculty member or administrator at Yale (or any other American college) who does not want minority students to succeed. Yale has been obsessed with what the academy calls “diversity,” trying to admit and hire as many “underrepresented minorities” as it possibly can without totally eviscerating academic standards. There has never been a more tolerant social environment in human history than Yale (and every other American college)—at least if you don’t challenge the reigning political orthodoxies. Any Yale student who thinks himself victimized by the institution is in the throes of a terrible delusion, unable to understand his supreme good fortune in ending up at one of the most august and richly endowed universities in the world.
But the ubiquitous claim that American campuses are riven with racism is not, apparently, one of the “false narratives” that Salovey had in mind. Not only did the president endorse that claim, but the husband-and-wife team who had triggered the Halloween costume furor penned a sycophantic apology to minority students in their residential college: “We understand that [the original e-mail] was hurtful to you, and we are truly sorry,” wrote Professors Nicholas and Erika Christakis. “We understand that many students feel voiceless in diverse ways and we want you to know that we hear you and we will support you.” Yale’s minority students may “feel” voiceless, but that feeling is just as delusional as the feeling that Yale is not “inclusive.”
So Salovey’s claim that Yale resolutely seeks out and unmasks “false narratives” is itself a false narrative...
I watched a bit of a 1-hr group class at the gym this morning while I was doing my HIIT cardio ritual. The class is listed as 80% cardio/fat-burning, 20% strength but I would consider it to be general conditioning: calisthenics with an intense cardio format. Like we did in school. Good stuff to squeeze once a week into the daily exercise program, and more often if you don't do weight training (which you should).
If you did something like this 4-5X/wk, with nothing else, your cardio fitness and physique would definitely improve after 6 months, but your strength and muscle only slightly.
At 6 am, the class was packed (about 40 people) with about half men, half women. Quite a few grey hairs in there, at least a quarter but it's hard to tell with the women because no women seem to go grey around here - it must be the water. I'd say ages 30-75. They say "All levels welcome." My trainer thinks those classes are BS, but I thought it seemed like an excellent and varied workout, high intensity with no lowering of heart rate and blood pressure and only light hand weights. The only rests I saw were on a 15 second count, or planks.
There were many sorts of body shapes in there (but no serious fatties, and no muscle-heads) and many levels of fitness but all did their damndest to keep up the pace set by the trainer. Here's what I saw from my jump-roping view:
They began with about 5 minutes of stretches, and warm-ups with things like sumos and slow jogging in place.
Then most of the routines were about 30 seconds each and some were repeated in a circuit: Air squats, jumping jacks, straight-arm planks, push-ups, high-knee jogging in place, step-ups, calf-raises, mountain climbers, jumping burpees, air squats with overhead press hand weights, sit-ups, supermans, air squats with forward hand weights, heavy ball floor slams, heavy ball throw and catch, fast standing twists with heavy ball, wall sits, lunges with hand weights, kettlebell swings, kettlebell walks and kettlebell shrugs.
I thought it was a fine, pretty intense hour of cardio-calis and I think I will find a way to fit that into my schedule, altho 6 am is late for me, because mixing cardio and calis is time-efficient and the group is motivating. Plus the classes are free for gym members. Yes, you could do it all on your own - but probably wouldn't.
Nobody walked out of that gym room with a sprightly step - all beaten up good. That's a good sign. If it were easy, that would be bad. I would have been dripping and dragging too. Well, I was anyway after doing my own routine. Good way to begin the day with a good head and a peaceful soul.
American society has divided along unreconcilable visions of the good, held by countrymen who increasingly regard each other as enemies. Any attempt by either side to coerce the other into submission augurs only the fate that has befallen other peoples who let themselves slide into revolution. It follows that the path to peace must lie in each side’s contentment to have its own way—but only among those who consent to it. This implies limiting the U.S. government’s reach to what it can grasp without wrecking what remains of our national cohesion.
I doubt the answers to their curiosity will be found in a lab, but they persevere. That article takes almost all of the sexiness out of the topic: What do women want?
Humans are bio-psycho-social critters, too complicated for labs.
The application for the inaugural students asks aspiring Social Justice Advocates to explain their interest in social justice, list their preferred gender pronouns (such as “zi” and “hir”), and describe any experience they have in facilitating workshops on “social justice” issues. Be a part of the BEST (Bruin Excellence & Student Transformation) inaugural Social Justice Advocates initiative supported by VC Kang’s office and Residential Life. We are seeking 8-10 Social Justice Advocates! The Social Justice Advocates initiative aims to empower students by developing them as conscious and critical leaders and equipping them with cultural and political capital as they navigate a world that operates on whiteness, patriarchy, and heteronormativity as the primary ideologies. Social Justice Advocates will learn about systems oppression and how they intersect and build upon one another maintain the status quo. Most importantly individuals and the collective will be empowered through liberatory scholarship and practices and strengthening their emotional intelligence to create change within their spheres of influence. students will be paid a quarterly stipend.
In New England, with our relatively brief growing season, it is difficult to have a crop of tropical and subtropical fruits like tomatoes for more than several weeks - mainly August-mid-September. Unless you are on the coast, it is hardly worth bothering to grow tomatoes (other than cherry tomatoes which ripen quickly) from mid- Massachusetts, north.
Some people, with more drive than I have, construct polyurethane tents, like greenhouses, to give their tomatoes a head start on the season. It is of minimal effectiveness. Why?
That's why putting them in early doesn't make sense unless it's your only chance to get them in at all. Experienced gardeners around here aim for putting them in around Memorial Day and their crops are generally more productive than those who try to jump the season.
The domestic tomato was bred, probably by Aztecs in Central America, into a useful food (as they did with the tomatillo). A brief History of Tomatoes. The wild version of tomato seems to be the Currant Tomato, a perennial vine with berry-like green fruit. By now, that plant has so widely cross-bred with man-made tomato that the wild type may be extinct. All of the modern colors, including bright red, are relatively recent genetic inventions. Every tomato today (including "heritage") is a testament to GMO - the slow kind achieved by the Aztecs up through the 20th century.
It's a mystery to me why, since I began a serious exercise program almost exactly two years ago, grey hairs are growing out brown, and my hair is thicker. So testifies my Sicilian barber of 20 years. My body has changed in many desirable ways - less fat, more muscle, cut abdomen (somewhat), better posture, tougher all over - but I do not exercise my hair at all and use no Rogaine, no hair dye.
Could it just be diet? I have tried to up my protein intake and go very easy on carbs except maybe in restaurants. I love mashed taters. Or potato chips which I also love. I tend to avoid vegetables unless in a Thai concoction, or unless cooked in garlic and oil. Or in bacon. Tomato is not a vegetable. I also tend to avoid fruit unless in a banana or strawberry protein smoothie because I do not like sweet things very much and, when I want some, it is never satisfying and makes me feel uncomfortable. I have always preferred savory to sweet. Generally-speaking, my program has lowered my appetite quite a bit so I focus on protein because I am told to. I do like a steak sandwich.
One case is just an anecdote, so it means nothing. I do wonder, though. Hair is mostly genetic but this change is odd.
17:22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.
17:23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
17:24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,
17:25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.
17:26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,
17:27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us.
17:28 For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
17:29 Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.
17:30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
17:31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
Mrs. BD visited Boston this week, and stopped by Olmstead's house in Brookline. Olmstead is a Maggie's hero. Nothing is changed from when he ran his design office there - drafting tables, blueprinters, etc.
Mr. Vanderleun found this excellent recording of the haunting anthem Not Dark Yet from Dylan's 1997 Time Out of Mind album. Was it that long ago? Sheesh, the time is runnin' away.
A commenter on Youtube:
This guy has reached me intensively in every stage of my life..Been with him since I was in hs, and now I'm a senior citizen. hearing this song as I face less than what was behind.
There is only one French salad dressing - mustard vinaigrette with shallots. This guy learned how to make it.No reason to ever use anything else other than laziness (I can be lazy and I like to put Ken's Steak House salad dressing from Costco on tomato slices).
The only French variation is to add tarragon or to use tarragon vinegar. I don't care much for tarragon flavor although it grows vigorously in my garden. Tarragon Chicken is a classic, but I don't care for it.
Isn't it strange that commercial "French Dressing" and "Russian Dressing" are American inventions? So is commercial "Italian dressing." Well, they all taste ok. Russian is great on a roast beef sammich.
What is a genuine Italian salad dressing? Salt, olive oil, vinegar (3 parts oil to one part vinegar). Toss it extensively - 30 times seems to be an Italian standard. You can add a few drops of Balsamic to that if you want, or use lemon juice (very Sicilian) instead of vinegar. Without salt, salad is not edible. It's barely edible anyway because it is rodent food and minimally-digestible by humans. I figure if you want to eat greens, eat a herbivore instead because they have the tools to break down and digest cellulose and thus the contents of greens. We do not.
Whether news or science, nobody can tell real from fake anymore. Everything seems to be from The Onion. Is there anything we can take at face value, or is everything fake?
Nothing has changed. The Yale Daily News was full of despicable little leftwing shits back in my day just like today. If they could see what Yale became, Henry Luce & Briton Hadden would be throwing up in the street.
The media mouth-frothing has reached unbearable levels, and quickly. ... This is not a new observation by any means. It was almost as bad in favor of candidate Obama in 2008, but a slobbering lovefest was far different a media trying to bring down a presidency without a single shred of substantive evidence to date.
The most common postural problem with desk-sitting and desk-reading is Postural Kyphosis (one type of 
Fiery Dolce & Gabbana designer hits back at critics who attacked him
In New England, with our relatively brief growing season, it is difficult to have a crop of tropical and subtropical fruits like tomatoes for more than several weeks - mainly August-mid-September. Unless you are on the coast, it is hardly worth bothering to grow tomatoes (other than cherry tomatoes which ripen quickly) from mid- Massachusetts, north.
